A manufacturing facility may include various measurement and/or control equipment such as sensors, transmitters, and actuators, collectively referred to as field devices, on a plant floor level which are controlled or monitored by one or more control devices (e.g., a programmable logic controller (PLC)). To manage the various field devices, associated controllers and related systems, the manufacturing facility may include enterprise level business planning systems (e.g., enterprise resource planning (ERP)). As such, ERP directs production, at a strategic level, that is handled by the industrial equipment at a tactical level. In addition, information technology (IT) systems, also residing on the enterprise level, may be incorporated throughout the manufacturing facility.
Unfortunately, standard communication protocols of the field devices, associated controllers, enterprise level business planning systems, and IT systems are often different from one another. Thus, communication between the field devices, associated controllers, enterprise level business planning systems, and IT systems is often non-existent. In addition, both IT and the plant floor desire access to the same information sources, but have differing requirements for that information.
Existing solutions either add additional devices or pull all the information from the PLC. Pulling all the information from the PLC, however, requires the PLC to be “shared” between plant engineering and IT, thereby requiring significant cooperation between plant engineering and IT, and limits the information that IT can glean to what the PLC has stored. This method of pulling the information from the PLC, extends the PLC beyond its intended usage in managing operations control.
Accordingly, it is desirable to facilitate communication between a field device, a device controller, and an enterprise application.